Power Trip Read online

  The location for our meeting was the big question mark. If the brain trust was up to no good I doubted they’d leave anything incriminating at headquarters; every investigation of a corporation begins at HQ. And according to Poole’s file, Niall Ormond had at least four homes outside of Nevada. One was sold following his death, but the other three remained in the care of the twins. One was in Northern California, one in Colorado, the third on an island in the Caribbean.

  And not just any island. The records showed that LoGo owned the small patch of land southeast of Puerto Rico, not far from Montserrat. There wasn’t much information about it, however. Maybe Ormond simply wanted to be able to say he owned an island, no matter how small. I would.

  There were two additional homes overseas, but Lucas and Gillian hadn’t left the country in the past year so I ruled out those, at least for now.

  Back at the Encore I valeted the SUV and strolled in to one of the hotel restaurants for a late lunch. The server was pushing the lobster bisque, but I told him that lately I’d developed an allergy to shellfish. That’s one thing I wish Q2 could fix in the investment program. If the host body was allergic to something, then I was allergic to it. Today that meant no lobster.

  This body needed some bulk anyway, so I ordered a deluxe burger, extra fries, and a chocolate shake. The server was silently disgusted.

  Opening my tablet I checked the feed from the tiny video camera I’d planted in my room. Literally planted; it was hanging in the leaves of a peace lily. Data showed movement from about 90 minutes earlier, so I tapped on that event. Sure enough, a short but bulky man crept across the carpet. His face was damaged, like he’d gone a few rounds — or a lot of rounds — with no gloves. Whoever did his hair was definitely not employed in Hollywood, and the clothes seemed a touch tight. Overall the guy was a mess, but you could tell from one look that no one would ever say it to his ugly face.

  I chuckled as I watched him put on surgical gloves and snoop through Conrad Dean’s personal items. After poking around everything on the desk and the bedside nightstand, taking a few moments to read various notes, he dug through my suitcase. Nothing interesting there, unless he had a thing for men’s underwear. Hey, he might. No judging.

  He lifted the mattress on each side for an examination, then walked into the opulent bathroom, where he stayed for about two minutes. Either he was pranking my toothbrush or he needed to pee. I hoped for the latter. And, really, who wouldn’t want to experience at least one piss in a bathroom that ran about $1,500 a night?

  He left right after that. Mission accomplished for both of us: this cat Richter got to check out an interloper named Conrad Dean from the firm of Locker-Mann, and I got some video of his scrambled-egg face.

  If I knew Poole she’d still be in the office, so I called. She was.

  “How’d it go?” she asked.

  “Swimmingly. The bait has been dangled, now we see if the big fish bite.”

  “You think they will?”

  “I think Quanta’s strategy is sound. Most of us might ignore a penny on the ground, but we’d all stop to pick up $800 million.”

  The server arrived with my gluttonous meal, along with a cocktail I hadn’t ordered. When I gave him a quizzical look he pointed to the bar. “From the young lady.”

  She was certainly young, maybe 23 or 24, blond hair that might’ve actually been real. She smiled and lifted her own drink in my direction. I smiled and gave a curt wave of thanks.

  “What are you doing?” Poole asked.

  “Getting propositioned. Listen, I need you to check on someone. Male, 40ish, 5-foot-8, probably 190. Might be listed under the name Richter, like the scale. When can you have that for me?”

  “Soon.”

  “All right, text me. And heads-up, I might need last-minute flight arrangements.”

  I thanked her and hung up just as the blonde walked over and pointed at the seat next to me. “May I?”

  “I’m not very good at conversation,” I said, dipping a fry into my shake.

  “We don’t have to talk much.”

  “Uh huh.” I took the biggest bite of my burger I could manage and let a chunk of tomato fall from my mouth onto the plate. This was almost as much fun as my tete-a-tete with LeMan. “I’d offer you a fry but I’m really hungry.”

  I’ll give her this: she didn’t fluster easily. “I don’t want a fry, thank you. You just looked so lonely over here I thought you’d like a drink.” She nodded toward the cocktail sitting next to my chocolate shake.

  I stopped chewing. With my mouth full I said, “Drink? Like . . . alcohol?”

  She couldn’t help but laugh as she nodded.

  “Oh, I couldn’t do that,” I said. “I’ve got a shake.”

  “That’s all right. How about company? Would you like that for a few hours?”

  I stopped chewing again and went full-on into Steve Martin ‘Ruprecht’ mode. “Company? Like . . . sex company?”

  She had no idea how to respond to that, so she just stared.

  “You are beautiful,” I said, cramming two more fries into my mouth. As soon as she started to smile again, I added: “But I really love my wife.”

  Chapter Six

  Poole had come through. Richter was a rough character, what my father used to call a hood. He’d done two stints in prison, the first starting at 18, then another at 26 for a variety of charges that included assault, breaking and entering, theft, and arson. Apparently his connection to three murders couldn’t be proved, so he skated on that particular charge. Poole’s notes said he definitely offed all three of them, though.

  He’d worked freelance in the two years he’d been out. His contacts in the slammer had only grown, so now it was easy for him to find work. LeMan employed him frequently. That was already a black mark on the LoGo ledger if someone like Richter was on their under-the-table payroll.

  I figured I’d see the man again, probably close up.

  The burger wasn’t sitting well, which explained why this body had come to me in such a scrawny condition. The guy apparently couldn’t handle much in his stomach.

  I’d like to say I’d gotten used to the unpredictability of my hosts, but that’s bullshit. I never did. I simply tried my best to adapt and hoped the next body would offer something better.

  By now you probably require additional information. Where did these bodies come from, and why was I walking around in their skin?

  Let’s consider this your next how-to. Here’s a brief history:

  All of the money funneled into research on artificial intelligence (AI) had an offshoot no one expected. No one except a brilliant woman at MIT named Devya Nayar. She realized that storage of an AI system wouldn’t be that different from storing actual human consciousness. Brains are brains, and not that different from one another. But the content? Ah, there’s what makes us unique.

  It’s like two wine glasses. Fill one with water, one with my favorite cabernet, Silver Oak. Same containers, but one is now much more different than — and much more fun than — the other.

  I’m the Silver Oak, for the record.

  Nayar took years and years, working in her government-funded lab, to figure out that, yes, all the things that make you you could indeed be extracted and stored. As you’d expect, there was a significant amount of trial and error, and I’m told the errors were catastrophically bad.

  But, quietly, in perhaps the most secret research our country has conducted since the Manhattan Project, Nayar successfully uploaded a person’s consciousness, including their memories and even their quirks, into a series of supercomputers. A few days later she downloaded that same data into a host body. And, voila, Person A was now successfully living inside Body B.

  It worked, but there was a new dilemma. How do you reveal to the general public that conscious immortality was now available? Billions of people would cry out to be next in line, demanding that they were worthy of this godlike gift. There would be riots, violence on a global scale. This went way beyo
nd the traditional battle between haves and have-nots. Imagine the pandemonium that would break out if this person was granted a new body but that person was not.

  And besides, where would you find so many new bodies to host them all?

  The government found they were sitting on the most phenomenal technology ever conceived, and yet it was utterly unusable from a practical standpoint.

  Or was it?

  Leave it to the Einsteins at the NSA and other stealthy departments. This new process, they claimed, was tailor-made for espionage work. No need to reveal anything to the citizens. Just use it to preserve the safety of the citizens.

  Thus was Q2 born in that shoddy cubicle. Three or four agents would be recruited who could take on the most dangerous assignments, and if they gave their life . . . well, they wouldn’t. They’d temporarily hit the pause button on their life.

  All we had to do was upload the most recent experiences we’d had and then keep risking our asses for John and Joan Q. Public. I was the second agent to join. The first one didn’t turn out too well, although I’m sure we’ll find him eventually. That’s another story for another time.

  I don’t know the three other agents, we never work together, and that’s just as well. There are plenty of crises to go around.

  Ah, but where to find the bodies for us? Where can you find a decent selection of human beings willing to sacrifice their sense of ‘self’? In essence, they’re committing soul suicide.

  If you want to keep the program secret you can’t advertise for this. So another civil servant came up with another brilliant idea.

  Criminals. The worst ones, to be exact.

  Take felons who were locked up for life, those with no chance for parole, and who didn’t have much to live for. All it would take is a carrot dangled in front of them, the right kind of carrot, a really, really big-ass carrot, and some would be willing. Not many, but you didn’t need hundreds. Just a few.

  The script goes something like this. Take a lifer in relatively good physical shape and offer two million dollars cash, tax-free, for the right to study his body in the name of science. He could set up his family for life, or at least for many years if they were even semi-wise with the money. In exchange he’d sever contact with them, almost as if it was a death sentence.

  Specific details couldn’t be shared with the felon, but enough for him to know he’d be helping his country instead of rotting in a hole. Many replied with “Go pound sand,” or a more colorfully-worded alternative, and went back to their cells.

  But every year a few agreed. Their families became wealthy, and Q2 had the bodies they needed. We called it reinvesting.

  I don’t know, is this ethical? Some say yes, some no. Personally, I still haven’t decided. I think about it often.

  But not at the moment. I was busy cursing the convict with the misspelled tattoo because he couldn’t handle a goddamned cheeseburger and fries without getting queasy. Some badass.

  I kicked off my shoes and lay on the bed. A nap sounded good. An early mentor in the espionage business told me you can never count on your next chance to sleep, so just grab it when you can. An hour here and there makes a difference.

  But first I connected to the series-8 app again to see if LeMan was up to anything. I got the Unable to access note, which meant LeMan had already torn up the card and trashed it. No matter. I expected his call before six.

  It came at 5:52 and woke me. I’d been dreaming about that bastard, Beadle, the one I was pretty sure had punched my ticket in Utah. I hated that guy.

  “Conrad,” LeMan said with a tablespoon too much of enthusiasm. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.” I assured him it was just a nap but not important. I’m the only person in the world who actually admits when a call has awakened them.

  “Gillian and Lucas Ormond would be thrilled to entertain you at their home in Colorado. Have you ever been to Telluride?”

  “Just once,” I said. “A wine festival, many years ago. The only thing I remember was the hangover.”

  He inserted the proper laugh for the appropriate length of time. “Oh, I can relate.” I doubted that. “I can send all the flight information if you like, along with directions to the home.”

  “I think I’ll drive,” I told him. “I’m really liking the car, and it’s probably not more than 9 or 10 hours. How about I arrive tomorrow, late afternoon? Would that work for the Ormonds?”

  “That would be ideal.” He added a few needless scraps of small talk before saying goodbye.

  After another five minutes with my eyes closed, doing my best to meditate but not sure if I really did, I got up. There were two calls to make.

  Christina answered after one ring. “Hey there, high roller,” she said. “How’s the desert?”

  “I’m told it’s hotter than usual.”

  “Is it all work? Any time to go to a show?”

  “A show? No. Although it would be interesting if they could’ve reinvested the original Rat Pack. That’s a show I’d see.”

  Christina was obviously giving that some thought. “But they wouldn’t have the same voices anymore.”

  “True. But Frank and Dean and Sammy would still have the same attitudes, even if their voices were shit.”

  I pulled aside one of the black-out curtains and gazed at the neon universe out my window. Crowds were milling about in herds, warming up for a night of debauchery.

  “What are you doing tonight?” I asked.

  “Leaving for dinner with Adam. Sushi.”

  Adam had been her best friend since middle school. I wasn’t allowed to meet him, for the same reason I couldn’t meet her family. “That’s great, babe. Have fun. Oh, I’m leaving very early tomorrow for Colorado. Don’t know when I’ll be able to check in again. But you know I love you.”

  “And you know I love you. All 135 pounds.”

  “It’s actually 154. Probably 156 after my lunch. Great fries.”

  The next call was to Quanta. I couldn’t hear the sound of wind chimes in the background but I imagined them.

  “Well, phase one is a success. I’m meeting the twins tomorrow evening. Telluride.”

  “I understand there’s a new player in the game,” she said.

  “Richter. Thug. Gun-for-hire. Scoped out my room. Peed in my fancy toilet, and I don’t think he washed his hands.”

  “Do an upload before you leave Vegas. Anything else?”

  “This body doesn’t like cheeseburgers. Are you sure I can’t sit in on the next screening?”

  “Goodnight, Swan.”

  There are reasons we don’t do uploads all the time. For one thing it’s far from a simple process. You need a quality high-speed connection, you need a place where you won’t get interrupted — can’t have someone stumbling across you in your coma-like state — and you need almost two hours. That’s an improvement from the early days when uploading took more than six hours and left your head screaming like a two-year-old’s tantrum.

  As for how it worked, that’s difficult to explain. As my favorite movie swordsman, Inigo Montoya, once said, lemme sum up.

  Take my current bag of bones. When this guy volunteered to donate his skinny body, he first underwent brain surgery. He was anesthetized (I mean, we’re not animals) and then a web of implants were inserted into something like 14 or 15 crucial points. Nodes, they tell me, and each of these implants has multiple functions.

  One, they act as a clearinghouse, rounding up all the data in certain regions, like a big magnet for ones and zeroes. In case you didn’t know it, all of your deep thoughts, whether it’s solving for x or lusting for your coworker, are nothing but electrical signals. Think about that the next time you get a little too high and mighty.

  The implants act like transmitters when I need to do a backup. They’ll send my thoughts and memories during an upload tonight, for instance. Everything I’ve learned, seen, felt, smelled, tasted, experienced — it’ll all go into my own special hard drive back at Q2 HQ.

 
When I invested in this body those little neural modules acted as receivers, and collectively they downloaded the complete, unabridged works of Mr. Eric Swan. That process takes considerably longer and leaves you staggered when you first open your eyes. A download can only happen once per body. Let me rephrase that; a download should only happen once per body. I’m not sure what the effects would be if I had a second download while already occupying, but the laugh-a-minute goobers who work in the investment lab in the Q2 dungeons assure me they’ve seen it once, and never want to see it again.

  I get the impression it’s like the demonic possession scenes from The Exorcist, but on a wickedly exponential scale.

  Uploading is faster these days because they’ve learned to cherry pick a little better. Instead of uploading all of my life experiences again and again, they’re able to find the files — for lack of a better word — that’ve been created since the previous upload. Kinda like saving your essay after every paragraph.

  And although two hours is an improvement, it’s still a significant chunk of time to be out of action. For reasons the whiz kids haven’t figured out yet, it doesn’t work well during sleep. Which is too bad, because that would make things so much easier, like charging your phone overnight. They discovered with early test subjects that dreams, of all things, jacked up the process and led to shitloads of corrupted files.

  It’s yet another clue that our subconscious dream cycle is even more complex than we imagined, and nothing to be trifled with. So a Q2 agent must be awake to upload, but just lying there. We can watch TV, read a magazine, or just ponder the meaning of life, as long as we don’t doze off.

  The process requires the great wifi speed I mentioned and two funky little gadgets we’ve camouflaged to look like deodorant and a can of shaving cream. Yes, I know; very James Bond, kinda corny. But what the hell, it works. No one ever snoops through a stranger’s deodorant.

  There’s also a chemical component. It’s a huge pill, what used to be called a horse pill, that serves double duty as a calming agent and what some call an adapter. One of our tech geeks explained it in detail, saying it temporarily increases the brain’s bandwidth. It’s one of the reasons uploads are quicker. Greases the skids, as they say. You don’t pass out, but you get completely chill, man.